"For the Good of Their Souls": Performing Christianity in Eighteenth-Century Mohawk Country by William B. Hart

Abstract

Reviewed by: "For the Good of Their Souls": Performing Christianity in Eighteenth-Century Mohawk Country by William B. Hart Darren Bonaparte (bio) "For the Good of Their Souls": Performing Christianity in Eighteenth-Century Mohawk Country By William B. Hart. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2020. Native Americans in the Northeast. 288 pages, 6 halftones, 6" x 9". $90.00 cloth, $26.95 paper, $26.95 ebook. I grew up in Akwesasne, one of the three Mohawk communities in the valley of the St. Lawrence River. My ancestors left the old homeland in the seventeenth century to be a part of the mission villages of New France. They forged a new alliance with the Natives already there, placing themselves at the head of it. It is said that two out of three Mohawks were in Canada by the end of the century, but those who remained in our homeland did not dwindle away and disappear. The fire of the Mohawk Nation continued to burn just as brightly back in the old Mohawk Valley. The Mohawk Valley Mohawks, as I tend to call them, loom large in the history of the century that followed. They were a vital factor in how events unfolded in the colony of New York, first with the military conflicts with the French and then in the American Revolution. The people of these relatively small villages played such a critical role in the Revolutionary War that they had to stop living in them. Their descendants are now in Canada at the Six Nations Reserve on the Grand River and the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory at the Bay of Quinte. [End Page 420] When they still lived along the Mohawk River, the Mohawks of the homeland continued to participate in confederacy affairs uninterrupted and undeterred by the absence of their wayward northern kin. They were still considered the "keepers of the eastern door" of the "extended lodge" that symbolized the League of the Iroquois. They would attend grand councils at Onondaga and join the rest of the confederacy in diplomatic or military endeavors. One might assume that because of that relationship, they maintained all of their traditional beliefs and eschewed Christianity, but that did not happen. Their close proximity to European colonists of New York brought the Protestant faith to their doorstep, which they found expedient to entertain. Much like the French and their Jesuits in Canada, the English and their ministers made for a similar chess game back in the homeland. This aspect of Mohawk history has been largely overlooked by historians, who typically gravitate to the soap opera romance of Sir William Johnson and his Mohawk wife, Molly Brant, or the warrior exploits of her hot-head younger brother, Joseph. John Wolfe Lydekker's The Faithful Mohawks, published in 1938, was the first book-length study of the subject, but it was not exactly something you'd take to the beach. William B. Hart brings a fresh, new focus to the subject of Christianity in the old Mohawk Valley in "For the Good of Their Souls": Performing Christianity in Eighteenth-Century Mohawk Country. Since there is a whole century (and a fair bit of the previous one) to cover in 288 pages, Hart goes about the work methodically, stepping back from the subject a bit to put it all in its proper perspective, then focusing in on a few key moments that illustrate his points as he crafts his narrative. The seasoned researcher might find some of the stops along the way to be repetitive of other scholarship, such as his take on the journey of the "Four Kings" to England in 1710, who were not really the big chiefs they were made out to be. But for those who might be new to the subject, he has written a great introduction to a complex topic. The author handles his sources very well for the most part, but I did notice one error that jumped out at me. He confuses two notable Mohawk leaders from the seventeenth century, the "Great Mohawk," Kryn, also known as Joseph Togouiroui, with Canaqueese, also known as Smiths John and the "Flemish Bastard," describing them as the same person. In his source citation...